A point was all Saturday required. Anyone who has watched this side over the past five months knew a point was never how they were going to go about it.
Eltham Redbacks are champions of VPL Women. There is no finals series in this competition, the table is the trophy, and the Redbacks settled the final round at Quarries Park the way they have settled most of the season, early and emphatically, beating FC Clifton Hill 3-0 to finish on fifty points from twenty-two games, with fifteen wins, five draws and two defeats. Promotion was already secured a week earlier. Saturday decided what the club goes up as, and the answer is champions.
It took three minutes to set the tone. Izzy Berks has spent the season making life miserable for defenders who want time on the ball, and the opening goal came from exactly that, her trademark gut-busting pressure forcing a Clifton Hill turnover that she then punished herself. It was another entry in a personal tally that passed thirty goals this season, a milestone the club celebrated only days before kick-off, and it felt right that the title-winning afternoon began with the work rate that has run through this team all year.
The second arrived on eleven minutes and belonged to the captain. Paige Foa swung in a corner, Claudia Dimasi flicked it on towards Taylor Halabi, and Halabi dispatched it from just inside the penalty spot. Two goals up inside a quarter of an hour, needing only a draw, and the question quietly changed from whether Eltham would win the league to how comfortably.
The answer to that one owes plenty to Tiana Orfanidis. Clifton Hill’s place in sixth was settled before kick-off, but they were one of only a handful of sides to take points off the Redbacks this year, having drawn 2-2 at The Web in May, and they enjoyed some genuinely bright spells either side of half time. Orfanidis met them with three exceptional saves, and the clean sheet she carried through the full ninety is as much a part of this championship as anything that happened at the other end.
Paige Foa removed the last of the doubt on eighty-four minutes, turning in a corner for 3-0, and from there Quarries Park belonged to the red and black in the away end.
The record behind the trophy stands up to any scrutiny. Brunswick Juventus were the only team to beat Eltham all season and nobody else managed it across twenty-two rounds, the Redbacks went into the final day having scored more goals than any other side in the division, and when the moment asked for one more performance they produced a 3-0 away win with a draw already enough. It is worth pausing on the coach, too. This was Jonathan Barrientos’s first season in charge, and it ends with the club promoted and champions. First seasons are supposed to be about settling in; his finishes with a title.
There will be time soon enough to think about what the next level asks of this group. Saturday was not that day. Saturday belonged to the players, the staff and everyone who made the trip to Quarries Park, and to a club that set out in March to prove it belonged in this company and finished August on top of all of it. The Redbacks are champions of VPL Women. Up the ‘Backs.